Asian Urbanization and Planning: Viewing the Production of Space from the Spaces of Production Nihal Perera, PhD Associate Professor of Urban Planning Ball State University
Abstract: Global affairs are increasingly shaped by events in Asia and its cities are undergoing profound social (i.e., economic, political, and social) changes. Yet the spatial transformations in Asian cities do not seem to follow this social transformation. According to the dominant discourses, Asian urbanization is following Western models, and the planning of Asia’s cities is conservative, reactive, and piecemeal. I will argue that the above characterization of Asian urbanization is inaccurate and is caused by external urban and planning perceptions. The discourses on Asian urbanization focus on their Westernization, approach the subject from the West, and deny space for developments that might consider these urban environments in alternative (non-Western) trajectories. As they speak, the scholars and professionals create the image of the Asian city as one that is dominated by West-centered global forces and processes, marginalizing the transformations caused by local inhabitants as part of their daily practices. I invite you to focus on the innovative Asian urban and planning practices, particularly the aspects of planning developed through learning by doing.
Henri Lefebvre highlights that “A revolution that does not produce new space has not realized its full potential.” 1 Global affairs are increasingly shaped by events in South-East Asia and its cities are undergoing profound social (i.e., economic, political, and social) changes. Yet this transformation does not appear to have a spatial component. According to the dominant discourses, especially those on globalization, modernity, global city, world city, informational city, international development, and their critics, Asian urbanization is following Western models, fitting well within larger West-centered urban structures. The social and spatial transformations in these cities seem to go in opposite directions. Moreover, the planning in Asia’s cities is conservative, reactive, and piecemeal. In this, Asia is undergoing a massive social change without a spatial counterpart. From a Lefebvrian standpoint, Asia is heading in the “wrong” direction. I am skeptical about this view. I will argue that this characterization of Asian urbanization and planning is partial and inaccurate. The above discourses –wrapped in global discourses-- focus on mega projects and the Westernization of Asian cities. This is simply one transformation among many. Beyond and besides this, Asian cities are undergoing a large-scale spatial transformation; they are mostly reactive, slow, and sporadic. The larger problem is with the above perception caused by the theoretical approach adopted in these discourses, especially the vantage point and the analytical framework which are external to Asia and privilege the West. The social power of the dominant discourses is not absolute. The changes taking place at the “bottom” (when looked at it from authorities’ or planners’ vantage points) and in the interstices of the society --or the real life-level-- reveal that (colonial) modern society was not as systematic as we are made to believe by the dominant discourses. As Partha Chatterjee argues:
The reason why many of the forms of modern government actually manage to work is because they make adjustments and negotiate with many of these contrary forms. They do so at the localized level, very often by recognizing themselves as merely exceptional cases. But, of course, exceptions pile up on exceptions and very often there are localized norms which are often quite contrary to what the larger principles would dictate. Very often, at the local level, people have an understanding that the norm is actually quite different. It is only by recognizing that norm at the local level that in fact the larger structure will survive. 2 While the system of domination is not complete, non-compliance, defiance, and resistance to the West-induced transformation operate in the center, within the cracks, and the margins of the system. “Bottom-up” processes and innovations take place and new ideas emerge in Asia’s cities, but at a small scale, slow rate, by small people who negotiate space for their daily practices. The professionals who adapt to the society, culture, environment also “learn by doing.” These innovations in Asian urbanism and planning lay beyond and besides the city of dominant Western narratives, in grounded realities. “Western” here stands for a perspective and vantage point; “innovation” refers to transformative practices that do not directly follow or mimic dominant or hegemonic examples. It does not refer to pure or authentic spaces, but to hybrid perceptions, conceptions, creations, and transformations of space that creatively combine local, regional, Western, and global knowledge and experience in new ways, but grounded in global, local, and daily processes. These are spaces that the subjects negotiate for their day-today practices within, besides, and in the margins of the larger spatial structures of the authorities. In so doing they create new physical spaces and redefine existing ones. The resulting hybridity of Asian cities is well described in Jeremy Richmond’s journal from his south-Asia based field study CapAsia IV in spring 2005. 3 Bangkok’s landscape is woven with religious and political imagery. Spirit Houses occupy various locations through out the city; the process of how these edifices are placed is not clearly evident to the casual observer, though ... there must be some criteria. The King is portrayed in large enshrined posters that line the major intersections and the political center of the city. The major political campaigners are portrayed ... on large posters, seemingly enshrined, which indicates their otherness from the average Thai... the King is portrayed in lavish dress as well as more common “European” dress indicating that they are other than the common man but simultaneously of the people. This merely touches the surface of the intricate cultural and political landscape which weaves itself through the city. One such phenomenon is that there is a monk only standing area on the ferries. According to this observation, Bangkok is neither Western-modern nor Thai-traditional and does not fit into this opposition; it is a unique hybrid with a strong sense of place and identity. 4 Richmond continues: Asian practices, as understood in these localities, use the structure of the West since the idea of ... design [and planning professions are] Western, though there may be mimicry or blind use of the Western minded practice, they are still working within the system to understand their own voice. Sri Lanka has produced very indigenized architecture
through the impetus of several architects. ... How are these emerging “professionals” constituted and legitimized in this Euro-centric world system, able to find their own voice and presence, either becoming more unmarked practitioners (architect…planner) or more local or possibly marked (Indian architect…Thai planner)? Or will the “third” inbetween “space” come into being somehow managing both extremes – the “middle way” of design with Buddha at a drafting table on a lotus chair? (Emphasis mine) Such complex understanding of the Asian city is hampered by the lack of analytical tools and theoretical approaches, due to the dependency on the West for intellectual tools. The scholars pay very little attention to the production of space, place, and identity by the majority of citizens. This focus on Westernization occupies the historical space of regular people of Asia of which the literature speaks. The discourse has marginalized and silenced local voices, 5 causing epistemic violence, much worse than physical colonialism. In order to bypass this impasse, I would like to observe the production of space from the spaces of production, or Asian urbanization and planning from Asian vantage points. The Lack of Intellectual Frameworks What you know is what you see, an African adage reminds us. Although the process of seeing and observing might be more complex, the parameters of what a researcher finds is largely mapped out in the research design, particularly the analytical framework and the methodology. In this type of Western research, there is hardly any space for the observation of realities that lay beyond the research focus in particular and Western worldviews in general. According to the former Director of Singapore’s Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA), Liu Thai Ker, a Western architect who was commissioned by the URA for a project in Singapore took two years to understand rain, a fundamental element of Singapore’s environment (as it is understood from a Singaporean standpoint). 6 To be fair to the Western scholar, whether in the West or Asia, the identification of indigenous-friendly planning practices outside of the West (or Westernized localities) are constrained by the Euro-centric analytical frameworks and approaches. These frameworks silence, erase, and marginalize indigenous practices. Anthropologists, among others, have attempted for decades to cross this boundary, but, Johannes Fabian argues that they create their Other by denying the subject the same time, or coevalness, of the researcher. 7 While there are exceptions, researchers of Asian cities largely deny their subjects the same time and space that the researcher occupies. The transformations of the city by regular citizens are not given the same time and space given to the high end projects. In this, the regular citizens are Othered. Besides, the city is a perception and there is no one city in which to carry out empirical studies. The absolute city is accessed through representations; as we do so, we create the city by classifying particular sets of processes as urban. 8 The administrators’, planners’, and scholars’ cities are perceptions constructed through the definition and identification of particular sets of social processes and structures as well as the territory on which these are believed to be concentrated as “urban.” 9 Each observer makes sense of the city by using intellectual frameworks of understanding which comes with their own “baggage” including premises, assumptions, biases, beliefs, interpretations, and narratives. Most crucially, as a person perceives and describes it, she or he also creates the city.
The city thus differs from one observer to the next, depending on the time and place from which it is observed (the vantage point), the knowledge and the world-view (the framework) applied, and the language employed to build it. Despite its partiality and the social power involved in it, representation is a necessity for the analysis, planning, and management of the city. Representations are not false, but quite the opposite; they give tangibility and materiality to the city by providing intellectual access to the city that is “out there.” This mediation enables the scholar and the practitioner to understand, examine, and modify it. What is false is the “objectivity” attached to certain representations, thus privileging them over the others. Hence, in this paper, I focus on the “discourse” on Asian cities which Foucault defines as the system of statements within which the world can be known. The strongest impact of colonialism and European expansion is the establishment of a European cultural hegemony, i.e., the socialization of the locals to think the way the colonializing society did. Although some societies in Asia were not directly subjugated by Western imperial powers, many scholars have argued that they have not been significantly different in regard to their cultural and economic dependence on the West, especially after the mid-nineteenth century.10 It is in this broad sense that I use “postcolonial” in this paper, and apply it to non-colonized countries such as China and Thailand. In their colonies, the Europeans not only built cities but also taught the “natives” their ways of understanding the city, although never completely, establishing a hegemony for their cultural perceptions and practices.11 The superior position was established through several means: the identification of certain environments in Colombo as a problem in the 1920s, the scientific definition and classification of these environments, the bringing of so developed perceptions into circulation, and making the Ceylonese accept these.12 The level of hegemony that this planning discourse has achieved is evident in the fact that fifty years after independence of 1948, the cultural “unpacking” of the British town planning discourse has not yet been undertaken. There are several ways in which the professionals and academics use Western knowledge. The main approach to knowledge is the direct use, i.e., to study the Western urbanization processes and apply them to local situations. Here the assumption is that this knowledge is scientific, that is free of cultural value, and can be transferred to other locations and times. While most professionals simply apply this knowledge, many have highlighted their frustrations when the Western analytical frameworks and methods do not work for them. Sulakshana Mahajan has the following observation, Arguments, projections and models based on the urbanization trends observed in the early industrialization period will prove grossly inadequate, redundant and futile like the forecasts based on future population growth in India made 5, 10, or 15 years ago. How these projections made by the United Nations Population Division for Calcutta and Mumbai have proved totally wrong. It is essential to analyse the failures of these projections and reasons behind them.13 Despite the criticism, Mahajan also refers to these Western frameworks as belonging to the unmarked early industrialization period.
From within the Western world-view, these mismatches are not seen as structural, but as shortcomings that needs minor adjustment. My own studies have revealed that even the basic processes of urbanization in the West and in Sri Lanka are very different; even the idea of evolution of cities from rural areas, which is fundamental to the understanding of Western urbanization, is redundant in modern Sri Lanka. I have argued that it is not Sri Lanka that made Colombo, but it is (colonial) Colombo that made Sri Lanka.14 This is a radically different understanding which challenges us to develop a different understanding of Asian (and other) urbanizations. As Mahajan, Otto Koenigsberger has also made similar criticisms. He was one of the first postcolonial planning critics in independent India to realize, in the 1950s, that British-style master planning does not work in Asia as its urbanization process is much faster and different than that of the societies in which this method was originated. He developed an alternative named action planning which better responded to local conditions. In order to avoid, among others, the inability to make accurate long term projections, he suggested that plans be made and implemented quickly and planning be carried out in cycles, updating and expanding the plans frequently within three to five years. Despite Koenigsberger being the Chief Planner of Delhi, action planning has not rooted in India or southeast Asia. The hegemony of the West has been too strong. The second way in which Western knowledge is used is by locating the city or the country within a larger structure which provides it a place in relation to dominant countries, within oppositional/ hierarchical structure. Here I refer to dualities such as developed-underdeveloped, metropolecolony, core-periphery, or hierarchical structures such as the capitalist world-economy and world cities. These frameworks provide a structural relationship in which Sri Lanka, for example, becomes the colony, the Third World, and periphery. All of these positions are subordinate to the West. The frameworks are West-centered and Eurocentric, and provide limited identity and agency for the locals within the structure of subordination. In this, if I want to know Colombo in relation to a hierarchy of world-cities, it is important to know the Global Cities, i.e, New York, London, and Tokyo. But I do not need to know anything about Jakarta. In fact neither Jakarta nor Colombo fully exist in this framework; if they do, they do so only as peripheral places, a quality which is shared by a large number of cities that provide the background for world cities. This framework too classifies, categorizes, and organizes the cities of the world from the USA –the vantage point– thus developing a knowledge of the world for the USA. As we socialize into this way of thinking, the differences between Asian cities such as Colombo, Mumbai, Kuala Lumpur, and the need to learn about them disappears. Hong Kong and Singapore are simply absorbed into the world cities discourse. Most crucially, these global structures cannot be viewed from the vantage point of those cities, but only from the West which devalues them as Asian cities. Hence, if we are to understand the local aspects of the Asian city, it is more pertinent to view it from the city itself. Hence my invitation to view the production of spaces from the spaces of production. What is significant here is that neither of these main approaches promote the movement of ideas across Asian countries. There is no way to know how these structures operate, say from Manila. If the scholars in Manila learn about Colombo, they largely do so from the West, along with its
Western category, structural location, and characterization– for example, that it is a Third World city affected by a separatist war. It is very important to question this structure of knowledge.15 Finding one’s identity is a priority for these places in Asia. Sang-Cheul Choe argues that East Asian cities are very much in transition, and are struggling to find their own identity. He claims that this is the beginning of a long and thorny journey exploring the Asian way of urban transformation which ensures itself from the risk of blind imitation of the alien urban paradigms.16 Vikramaditya Prakash reflects on his thoughts: “I came back from [the second conference on Tradition and Modernity, held in Indonesia in 1996] feeling ... that to understand the full impact of the development that is going on today, one needed something of a paradigm shift of a kind that is still unclear to me.”17 Hence the question, how can we understand Asian urbanization? How can we see this from a local perspective and a local vantage point? Asianizing the Asian City Asianizing the Asian city is largely carried out by the regular people at the day-to-day level. According to Lefebvre, the reduction of (colonial) modern representations of space which are based on mathematics and science (that the Europeans were developing during the imperial era) does not take into account the autonomy and creativity of the subjects.18 Despite the profoundness and intensity of its impact, European colonialism (and hegemony) is a layer in the multi-layered present of Asia. Nevertheless, the European hegemony has caused ruptures in regard to both time and space, privileging this layer from other historic and vernacular spaces that have combined over time making hybrid identities and spaces. The bridging of the gap between the externally imposed spaces and local spatial practices is an essential component in postcolonial space-making. What urban studies have largely failed to consider is that, to quote Arjun Appadurai in a different context, “at least as rapidly as forces from various metropolises are brought into new societies they tend to become indigenized in one or another way.”19 What is missing in most studies is the idea that, in Goh Beng-Lan’s words, the “people are never passive recipients of external initiatives, but rather always struggle within their own immediate contexts of constraints and opportunities to produce a meaningful life with their own particular values and goals.”2 0 In regard to planning, Jill Grant highlights the familiarization of New Urbanism:21 “Although within the ultimate New Urbanist scenario, home owners live next to renters and the merchants live above the shops, both apartments and houses in Canada are mostly occupied by owners, and the image has become a caricature and the settlement a theme park.”22 As the recipients of a space make it meaningful for themselves, especially for their social and cultural activities, the original space tends to transform. Anthony Giddens highlights “the capability even of the most dependent, weak and the most oppressed … to carve out spheres of autonomy of their own.”23 The assuming of a subject position within a space (including the dominant space) requires the creation of new hybridized cultural practices and spaces of varying autonomies. Hence, the assuming of a subject position itself opens up the possibility of redefining, negotiating and, if necessary, subverting space.24 Familiarization, including indigenization, localization, and personalization are simultaneously forms of questioning, resistance, and adaptation of extant spaces and spatial structures.
Spaces are being constantly familiarized by people who live and migrate to Asian cities. Chandigarh, the great modernist capital in Asia, is complemented by many neighborhoods and built by inhabitants beyond and besides the administrative city. Many former inhabitants redefined their lives within this administrative city; this is evident in Bujwada and Nagla villages and the Shastri market. The outsiders who were excluded from the plan have built their own neighborhoods near the residences of the lowest grade government workers. The city designed and built was thus filled in and expanded by people with little power.25 According to Aditya Prakash, worked with the team that who saw the city develop, Chandigarh was planned as an elite city and the rest of the city, beyond its planned, elitist limits, grew by creating its own momentum.26 In short, those who were excluded from the planned city engaged in creating their own spaces; this is represented in self-built housing, non-planned settlements, satellite towns and new industrial areas. Over 100,000 people now live in these self-built settlements.27 All Asian cities are comprised of many cities and the less powerful are highly creative in making many decisions that planners make in regard to location, the size and scale of the structure and space they create, and the type and kind of activity they engage in. Bangkok, for example, has another city –or many cities– that function alongside with the formal city. Among others, there is a continuous flow of people who eat on the sidewalks. In regard to Mumbai, Rahul Mehrotra brings to light what he calls the Kinetic City.28 This temporary city is not simply created by the poor or who are conventionally recognized as being in the informal sector. Following Western perceptions, this informal sector is economically defined and privileges the economy over other aspects of life. For Mehrotra, ephemeral structures are built even by the government to celebrate the national day and more formal organizations to celebrate occasions such as the Chinese New Year. I have personally observed that there is no lack of such structures in Hong Kong. In the transforming China, the people whose economic and spatial needs are not met create their own villages, urban villages. The expansion of Chinese cities takes away the farming land of the nearby villages that get incorporated into the city. This way they are left with their houses, or reproduction land. The migrants who come to the city also do not have affordable housing. Matching these two needs, and creating opportunities for both, the villagers of Tianhe village in Guangzhou, for example, have build their houses up, about seven stories, and rent the spaces to migrants.29 This is extremely innovative matching of the needs of two groups in the city. Even within China, the creation of such urban villages is not uniform. The migrants from Zhejiang province in Beijing, for example, created their own village with the help of similar villagers in the city. Yet the migrants were more entrepreneurial and more powerful to create a village, Zhejiangcun, to suit their own needs but modified to the conditions in Beijing.30 This way they familiarized the urban space in different ways than the migrants of Tianhecun in Guangzhou. The transformation of Chinese cities is not limited to migrant spaces. The citizens themselves are engaged in refamiliarizing spaces created during the Cultural-Revolution era; this is evident in the recreation of religious and other cultural spaces.31 Moreover, such transformations from the “bottom” are carried out in all cities in Asia. In Hong Kong, for example, people protest
against most development projects today. The issue is, how can we understand the subversive space-making which challenges the administrative and planner-centered space-making? The development of our ability to see innovations in ordinary spaces would help us overcome the hegemony. It allows us to displace Westernization, for innovations are locally produced, not borrowed, but within a global context. In Asia, the citizens do produce their own globality. Although referring to the immediate post-independence period, India’s first Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru best highlights his notion of local (Indian) modernity: India is a . . . cultural unity amidst diversity, a bundle of contradictions held together by strong but invisible threads. Overwhelmed again and again, her spirit was never conquered, and to-day when she appears to be a plaything of a proud conqueror, she remains unsubdued and unconquered. . . . She is a myth and an idea, a dream and a vision, and yet very real and present and pervasive. . . . From age to age she has produced great men and women, carrying on the old tradition and yet ever adapting it to changing times.32 .... there can be no real cultural or spiritual growth based on imitation . . . true culture derives its inspiration from every corner of the world, but it is home-grown and has to be based on the wide mass of the people. Art and literature remains lifeless if they are continually thinking of foreign models.33 It is this diverse and hybrid society and space that we miss when we look for and apply pure (Western) categories. Identities are complex and cannot be spelled out in pure categories. So is the Asian city. Whether an observer sees the creations of such subversive spaces, what she sees in them depends on her positioning. The “low-politics” of the subjects largely become dismissed as unimportant compared to the “high-politics” of authorities which is about power and economics.34 Planners have a way of focusing on growth and being silent about important tensions that emanate from ethnic and cultural differences, portraying these issues as “low-politics,”35 especially by getting back into their technology nest and serving the power. The official planning story, according to Leonie Sandercock, portrays planning as a heroic pursuit leaving out gender, class, race, and cultural biases of planning practices, and by implication, serving as an agent of social control, regulating bodies in space.36 Moreover, such documentation reinterprets planning, locating it in a scientific mode of historiography.37 Despite challenging the modernization paradigm from a mode of production standpoint, and highlighting the significance of urban and social movements, the urban political-economy approach is still Western scientific (modernist) and its bearers view urban processes from an external viewpoint, and tend to privilege it as “objective.” They classify and categorize the subjects, transforming them into objects and limiting the positions that the latter can assume within the structure employed by the researcher.38 This way, they see global cities, world cities, network societies, and civil societies all through (Western) scientifically constructed categories. They have provided an insight into society but, in this view, culture and the worldviews are static and muted.39 They do not see their own subjectivity and themselves in the discourse. They see classes but do not necessarily see the subalterns, let alone the latter’s perspective. Most crucially, they wish to represent the subalterns within their frameworks. Within this external view, planning is seen as a provision: we provide for them, a view which is somewhat revised by the
“class struggle.” I am not convinced that digging deeper into the same paradigm of Western rationalistic science is capable of providing alternative insights.40 Going beyond the urban political economy of the 1970s, scholars of planning such as Leonie Sandercock, Oren Yiftachel, Karen Umemoto, and Vanessa Watson have been searching for new ways of understanding planning.41 In my own research, I had to develop my own strategy. I pursued a simple question: Why do people in Sri Lanka plan, design, and build the way they do? In my book, Decolonizing Ceylon, I map out the territories, urban systems, and architecture created by the Portuguese, the Dutch, and the British in Ceylon, from Western perspectives, and ask how did local groups such as the elite, the nationalists, the socialists, the youth movements, the separatists, the planners, and the architects respond to these spaces. As many good studies of colonialism and urbanism carried out from a Western vantage point exist, my interest was to find out what I would see from the Sri Lankan side. Hence, I had be open to the possibility of Sri Lankans creating spaces that would go beyond and besides colonial spaces. I have documented the processes of familiarization of colonial Colombo by the elite, workers, migrants, the Buddhist establishment, and women.42 Similarly, in the context of Singapore, Brenda Yeoh examines the production of space excellently; her Contesting Spaces examines the conflicts between British and SingaporeanChinese spatial perceptions and practices.43 Today, there is a strong body of work that approaches postcolonial urbanism from postcolonial standpoints. A cohort of scholars in urban studies employ locally-friendly perspectives that could acknowledge local agency and be empathic to inhabitants. The deconstruction and the decentering of colonial, Western, and nationalist discourses has been effectively carried out by scholars of subaltern and postcolonial studies.44 Despite the expansion of these studies beyond their original foci of history and English literature, they have little to say about social space and urbanism. Approaching from a number of theoretical perspectives, particularly politicaleconomy, scholars of colonial urbanism have, from the mid-1970s, begun to expose the political and social power involved in the historical construction of social space and the connections between colonial policies and spatial subjectivity.45 Beginning in the 1990s, critically feeding off these streams of studies as well as new cultural geography, scholars of urbanism and planning began to not only expose the Euro-centrism and male-centrism in mainstream work, but also attempted to acknowledge agency and the transformative capacity of the subordinate subjects in the production and transformation of space. Shifting the vantage-point in different ways and questioning ‘post-colonial’ and ‘nationalist’ constructions of social space at different scales, the work of Holston (1989); King (1992); Hershkovitz (1993); Yeoh and Kong (1994); Yeoh (1996); Nalbantoglu and Wong (1997); Perera (1998); Sandercock (1998); Kusno (2000); Zhang (2001); Law (2002); Goh (2002); Nasr and Volait (2003); Yang (2004); and Hosagrahar (2005) among others, laid a foundation for the study of urbanism from “subaltern/postcolonial” perspectives.46 These works, produced from local vantage points could help us develop our own frameworks to understand Asian urbanization on its own terms. As these authors highlight, it is important to develop appropriate analytical frameworks. In addition, I would stress the significance of adopting local vantage points. Moreover, paying attention to the spatial stories of ordinary Asian citizens and those of planning which learns from people and making these practices visible would lead to the creation of new cascades of thought, practice, and scholarship. More
immediately, their documentation would create an alternative “tool box” for urban managers, leaders, and planners in Asia, not simply to borrow or mimic, but to generate inspiration for more diverse practices. These studies can shed light on the complex urban processes in Asia, particularly on subversive and contested spaces. At the same time, it is important to avoid significant problems. First we should avoid thinking of Asia as the opposite of the West, but deconstruct the hierarchy and the structures that disprivilege Asia by provincializing the West. This way we can be open to the idea of hybridity and to treat the West as any other region from which the planners can borrow as and when needed. Moreover, it is important to understand that whatever the knowledge that we produced is not complete. As long as it is about subjects, they too develop knowledge and spaces. Hence we should locate ourselves also within the discourse, and acknowledge the subversive elements existing within our own narrative. The Absence of Innovation in Planning Despite the large scale transformation of Asian cities and the innovative practices at the day-today level (discussed above), planning is yet to catch up with these developments. I do not refer to the absence of the tallest building or the largest fountain in the world, which are claimed to be in Asia. Moreover, the highrises are being Asianized in places like Shanghai though new roof designs and lighting at night. I focus on the weak connection between planning and the culture, nature, and the history of the place. The planners are yet to open themselves up to learning from the people and people’s practices and developing a more locally oriented discourse. Despite the fact that new professional ideas have seeped into Asian cities, and the higher-end planning is operating at more or less the “cutting edge,” the perceptions are largely imported from the West. As mentioned earlier, Anthony King argues that colonialism was the vehicle by which contemporary urban planning, developed in the West within a Western culture, was exported to many non-Western societies.47 This was initially carried out by the conscious laying out of various settlements, camps, towns, and cities according to various military, political and cultural principles developed in the metropoles. The beginning of the twentieth century saw the export of formally stated town planning ordinances and theories. The process of exporting planning has continued beyond European imperial times, well into the era of so-called sovereign states, and further intensified under the banner of liberalization and globalization. Whether as part of foreign aid packages, a concern for the poor or the environment, an interest in taking part in the process of globalization, or training professionals in the West and within Western discourses, the export of values, ideologies, and planning models from the West is still strong. What planners in Colombo are most excited about is the environment. This is not an indigenous idea: The new concern for the environment is also an imported notion which does not provide much room for indigenous notions. The concern of the Urban Development Authority (UDA) of Sri Lanka for the environment is not based upon the nature-culture relationship with which the Sri Lankans are familiar; the one that was widely practiced for millennia before the British introduction of domination over nature, a monoculture-based vegetation system, and economically shaped environment in the mid-nineteenth century. It is about protecting the wild life, the rain forests, and marshes which are very relevant to the well being of the USA. This is not to belittle the fact that the planners in Colombo have, for example, different views about
reclaiming land. The planners do not think that the marshes are waiting to be filled and developed. Therefore, strategies have been introduced to preserve and retain natural areas in their existing state, while permitting activities in harmony with the environment.48 Other exported ideas –that will not be discussed in this paper– include historic preservation, modernity, and globalization. The planners who presumably undertake to create a future strongly acknowledge existing – largely colonial– boundaries, data, and information. Old structures distorting current development and management of the city is a constraint that transcends Asia; the limited land area that falls within the city –excluding the suburbs– itself is a problem for managing the city in the USA. In Colombo, while the planners hesitate to confine the “practiced” city within its municipal boundaries, for the lack of a larger metropolitan boundary, they use another colonial demarcation, Western Province, as the larger urban region. Most questionable is the fact that planning is considered to be politically and culturally neutral. Although planning was considered an objective exercise practiced for the public good at the early days of the profession, the fact that planning, development, and foreign aid are political was exposed in the late 1960s. The issues of environment and globalization, and the new progrowth approach taken by the planners, have caused planning, once again, to appear apolitical. In this context, the American interest in selling computers to communities that need food and housing gets camouflaged within the desire to have modern Western technology and the idea of integrating them into the so-called informational society. Despite the new ideas, concerns, and considerations that have entered into planning practice during this period, urban planning still lacks direction; planning responses to the current transformation at large have been rather weak. Planning has principally been reactive and has responded to what planners have recognized as immediate problems. Planning, in most cases, has been a piecemeal effort which has not taken into account the larger and longer term processes that are underway. For the most part planning has taken the form of strategic intervention, but the silences are significant. According to Liu Thai Ker, the economic upgrading of Asian countries have not been matched by environmental improvement. Hence the current urbanization process is bound to require a second round of planning, later on, especially once the problems that are overlooked become critical. As more land is developed, and further developed, any changes to the city’s infrastructure and the built environment is going to be more costly, and will result in the relocation of citizens, activities, and functions, and the demolition of buildings and infrastructure.49 The progress that Asian states are making is defined within the capitalist world-economy, and the continuity of this trend requires the continuity of capitalist structures, which are in transition.50 Paradoxically, the states which are leading the development effort, and required to maintain some equity, are eroding at the same time. Challenges to it are posed more from inside the state than from outside; Sri Lanka is a good example of this. At the very moment in which the state has begun to preside over the process of development, its sovereignty and the legitimacy
has been challenged by Tamil Separatists. Hence planning has to adjust to these changes and challenges. The two crucial issues at this time concern the perceptions of the city on which these planning exercises are based and the new directions in planning. Firstly, the unique aspects of Asian urbanization have not been adequately appreciated. For example, many Asian countries have large semi-urban areas. Terence McGee and Norton Ginsburg, who have argued about what they call “desakota” and “extended metropolitan regions,” have begun to identify some aspects of this uniqueness.51 Although they begin to problematize the shortcoming of the conventional view, which is the US-centric view of urbanism, they use Jean Gottman’s work on megalopolis as a point of departure,52 and focus on the economy which is most pertinent for the analysis of Western cities. Nevertheless, within the urban political-economy paradigm, McGee argues that the Western paradigm of the urban transition is not directly transferable. He highlights the difference: “The uneven incorporation of these Asian countries into a world economic system from the fifteenth century onward created divergent patterns of urbanization.”53 Although this is also an outside view, it provides some insights into Asian urbanization. Yet the Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan (CMR Plan) does not mention much uniqueness nor does it engage with the semi-urban areas, or desakotas. While the CMR Plan correctly identifies that “Incompatible land use and ribbon development along the principal trunk roads in the region has led to traffic congestion and delays in passenger travel,”54 it is unable to characterize this nonconventional development –a Western perception– from a local standpoint. Instead, the Plan identifies a urban hierarchy, and implies a clean division between the urban and the rural.55 Anything that is outside of this model is a problem that needs to be corrected. In this, their topdown approach itself creates problems on the ground. Despite the renewal of the discourse, however, the people’s day-to-day language has not entered plans and planning reports. In other words, planning in Asia still remains foreign with very little indigenous perceptions of space-making finding their way into the planning discourse. In Sri Lanka, people define space in terms of handi (junctions) and malu, in India they use chowks, in Kathmandu space is organized around durbars and hitis, and longtangs are very important in China. The language of massive resistance to growth –categorized as development– in Hong Kong has not entered the planning discourse either. These and other important signifiers of space have hardly entered the planning discourse, the explicit objective of which is “public good.” At the same time, if these concepts enter the planning discourse, there is also a danger of them being assimilated into the dominant discourse, in which process their meanings will be transformed. This may not be a deliberate act, but reveals a structural constraint of the intellectual frameworks employed by planners. Such assimilation has very much occurred in regard to kampongs of Indonesia and Malaysia. From a physical viewpoint, there is not much concern for the older fabric of the built environment. In regard to the historic areas in Beijing, Wu Liangyong asserts that Throughout much of the post-Second World War era ... urban renewal and the wholesale replacement of old dilapidated city precincts with entirely new and different types of structures was quite acceptable. Today, by contrast, in most parts of the world, it is clear
that traditional urban patterns of settlement are to be valued not only for their strict historical significance, but also for their aura.56 Roger Chen argues that Whilst it is imperative that Shanghai develops into a finance and service economy in the informational era, it is equally important that the city maintains its traditional sector .... Cities that can preserve their own cultural characters, keep and make full use of their unique natural advantages when they develop according to an international standard, will be better places for living, visiting, and investing.57 The remaining historic areas of a city have more significance than their sheer history and aura; they are part of continuity of the identity and culture of the people. At the same time, the conservation of hutongs occur within the larger processes of commercialization and gentrification. In the more state dominated Singapore, Perry and others highlight that “much of the conservation initiative is state driven and state-planned and serves the various ideological intents of the government.”58 Hence, there is a substantial gap between the planners and the “citizens.” In regard to three plans for Singapore and Hong Kong, John Friedmann argues that, “As top-down efforts with very limited involvement of others than government and certain business sectors, [the plans] fall short of the criterion of active citizen participation.”59 Yet the use of overarching external categories such as the “civil society” to identify the whole non-political community homogenizes the community. Going beyond this limitation requires the shifting of the vantage point. In regard to Seoul, Joochul Kim and Sang-Chuel Choe highlights the significance of acknowledging the on-going urbanization processes: When strolling along the streets of Seoul, particularly in the island of Youido, one is left with the impression that it is like any other modern western city. Buildings, street designs, business activities and other city functions closely resemble cities such as New York, Tokyo, and London. A uniquely Korean tradition in architectural and cultural presentation is lacking. The absence of traditional Korean influences, along with a substantial increase in urban density and crowding, reduces the overall legibility of the city environment: the city looks disjointed, chaotic, and unattractive. The development of special functional districts within the city might enhance its image and ambiance. At present, a number of special districts such as theaters, antiques, general consumer goods, and electronic products have been created in various sections of the city, but others, such as foreign embassies, historic sites, and the arts, are not available. The creation of such special districts cannot be brought about by zoning or other enforcement mechanism alone, but rather through a historical process of urban growth and development.”60 The addressing of Western concerns such as modernization, Westernization, environmental pollution, and globalization could only transform non-Western cities into more familiar Western environments, for the West and the Westernized locals, and more profitable environments for local businessmen and growth coalitions. Although the contemporary planning tools provide some advancement for the non-Western societies within the dominant structures, within an
international setting, these strategies do not empower the local people very much. Although all plans mention equity, the way in which privatization is promoted,61 the plans disempower the people. Planning has become an expert-driven exclusionary activity which does not provide room for other voices. The planners have moved away from a century-long tradition of growth control to become promoters of economic development. This approach has a strong element of pro-growth urban politics and an interest in showcase projects which have been common in the USA.62 So far, experts with alternative views, NGOs and the general public have played highly subdued roles.63 Beyond the import and export of ideas, the dependency on the West is reproduced by training planners in the West and Western institutions, and maintaining the centers of knowledge production and the journals that validate knowledge in the West. A major cause for the continuation of exporting Western planning and planning ideas is the training of planners within Western discourses, whether in the West or elsewhere. What the Euro-centric discourses have failed to do is to reconnect planning with the place, the people, the culture, the past, and the future. Yet this is a colossal undertaking. Chung-Tong Wu points to the fact that “planning practice in Asia is more than ever both difficult and challenging. Most planners who work in Asia will have to spend their time navigating the unknown.�64 Ideas that might give rise to place and culture specific ways of thinking and the development of new approaches to planning in Asia have been hampered by the marginalization and silencing of ideas and practices that fall outside of the Euro-centric discourses. In this context, highlighting such ideas and practices would help planners develop more place and culture specific discourses. Asianizing Planning At the same time, many Asian leaders, administrators, and planners are responding to this challenge. They are navigating the unknown and are learning by doing. Planners and planning scholars need focus more on their progressive practices. In order to see these practices, they need to develop intellectual frameworks and adopt local vantage points and look at the right places. Innovative practices are found in the cracks of the society, in the exceptions, and the details. Moreover, planners ought to learn from the people. In this section I wish to hightlight how planners are engaged in the empowerment of local communities and thereby in Asianizing planning. A prerequisite to seeing subversive and innovative practices is to acknowledge the fact that successful planners and designers of social space in Asia are largely trained in the field (on the job), through learning by doing. As I have argued elsewhere,65 select architects have developed place and culture-specific practices which I call critical vernacularism. Although it is not so pronounced, this is not uncommon in planning. As mentioned before, Koenigsberger developed the notion of action planning in Asia and also practiced it. Matthew Nowicki who developed the first plan for Chandigarh finished all his designs in an Indian idiom. Institutions like the Urban Redevelopment Authority (URA) of Singapore, the Mahaweli Architectural and Planning Unit (MAPU) of Sri Lanka, and the Design Cell of KRVIA have developed their own models of research and development, and the Department of Town and Country Planning at the University of Moratuwa has launched a bachelor’s program and its new leaders have radically redefined planning education at graduate level.
At the same time, however, the type of development that is taking place in Asia is also considerably different. Most significantly, planning is becoming popular and being practiced in most cities. During the latter part of the last decade, when the demand for architecture was sliding downwards, the demand for admission to the planning program at the School of Planning and Architecture (SPA) in New Delhi increased,66 and the leading private school of architecture in Mumbai, Kamla Raheja Vidyanidhi, have been focusing on large-scale community development projects. Currently, the CEPT University has opened a branch in Mumbai. There are fundamental differences in the way in which many Asian cities take part in the discourses of environmentalism and globalization. An extraordinary feature of the CMR Plan is the acknowledgment of the existing system of paddy fields, wetlands, and the canal system in Colombo, and undertaking to protect and promote that pattern: Colombo Metropolitan area has a unique natural landscape with wetlands, water bodies, and paddy fields combined with rivers and natural and man made canals. ... The strategy of the CMR Plan is to utilize this natural layout by making further improvements for sustainable development through application of appropriate environmental and physical planning strategies.”67 What is identified is a complex vernacular land use system made up of natural land forms, natural and man-made water features, urban land uses and farming which cannot be characterized by conventional terms employed in analysis, the separation of uses. Here, planning begins by identifying the areas that should not be developed and by promoting high density development in other areas.68 For Colombo, globalization is both getting more connected to the global economy and also reasserting Sri Lanka’s national identity. While the UDA opened up the CBD for private capital in the late 1980s, inviting international banks and financial agencies to invest in it and to rebuild it in an international style, it also developed a new capital, a political center in the outskirts of Colombo. In separating global-economic and national-political functions, the UDA moved the national parliament house and the Secretariat to the new seat of government in Sri Jayawardhanapura-Kotte. While the new CBD in the Fort was built by private companies –after the government lead– in an International Style, attempting to erase locally produced differences, the Parliament House was built by the government in a Sri Lankan style, representing the nation and its identity.69 This way Sri Lanka is producing its own globality, on its own terms. This is very different to what the Global City, World City, and the dominant globalization discourses suggest. In regard to the Mahaweli Project, a large irrigation-based development project in the interiors of Sri Lanka, its design and planning unit (MAPU) developed its (unrelated) version of action planning. Prior to that in the early 1980s, even after decades, the new towns in the north-central Sri Lanka had very few buildings dispersed in space with vegetation in between. These were partially developed rural areas. In the 1980s, MAPU decided to provide the settlers with a town from the beginning of their life in the newly irrigated areas. It would build the towns outwards from a dense urban core created by the clustering of the institutional and commercial buildings that would be built in the first few years. The plan was updated annually based on the building
program, funding, and other factors which were also determined annually, thus connecting the social processes and space. While the town was anchored in the core, it also allowed some flexibility for the users to adapt through a “loose-fit” plan and design of buildings.70 These towns were thus urban centers from day one, but their planning process continued in cycles. In this, the planners were in close touch with all agencies involved in the development process and allowed for future inhabitants’ responses. In the 1980s, the Sri Lankan government adopted a housing policy founded on the idea of “support systems.” This was based on John Turner’s idea that the state provision of housing is not a solution to self-building which is a response to the lack of affordable housing. Instead, the people should decide what they want and the state should support. Although this sounds idealist (and anarchist), the Sri Lankan government did implement a policy based on such support systems. Although the policy is known by its name The Million Houses Program, its lessons have not been absorbed into the thinking process. Conservation also provides an effective way to perceive the city or parts of it within indigenous histories –not necessarily as static environments following the way Western philosophers such has Hegel have characterized Asian societies. This would enable planners to reconnect the future of the city to its past. The Ju’er Hutong project in Beijing provides a good example of this kind. Here the historic courtyard houses organized around hutongs are revitalized, but within a contemporary setting. Critics and planners are highlighting that planning is political. In Slumming India, Gita Dewan Verma has argued that the planning authorities have to accept responsibility for their action.71 Particularly the slum formation in India cannot be viewed as the making of the slum dwellers or the colonial regime, especially after five decades of independence. Moreover, the plan is a document of entitlement, especially for the under-privileged. Hence, it is important to implement these. These are novel definitions of the plan which are not well received in India. In a bold move, the National Physical Planning Department (NPPD) in Sri Lanka has recognized that planning is political. The planning commissions and boards at national and regional levels include leading administrators and politicians. This way these leaders would buy into the plan that they got involved in “making,” or authorizing, and have some interest vested in its implementation. Along with the surge of planning, new planning agencies and institutions to support these efforts are also emerging. Most of these cities not only have new plans, but also new agencies, for example, Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA), Delhi Development Authority (DDA), Urban Development Authority (UDA) of Sri Lanka, and the NPPD in Sri Lanka established in 2001. This way the institutional structure of planning in Asia has been changing. With a different mission at hand, the agencies themselves view the cities they focus on differently. Colombo is increasingly redefined within its metropolitan region. MMRDA considers Mumbai region to be a multi-centric city. This is a different type of a city compared to the traditional one that is found in literature which has a core and suburbs around it. Sri Lanka also developed a national spatial plan.
While Asia has been highly innovative, the innovations have been sporadic and temporary. This is largely due to the planning community’s focus on the developments in the West and the lack of availability of these innovations for them to understand and/or to use. These innovative aspects of planning can be further enhanced and others can learn from these experiences. It is the responsibility of the academics to provide visibility to the innovative and locally grounded practices. Yet the mere documentation of these practices is insufficient. They need to be documented in substantive and analytically sophisticated ways that highlight their relevance. Why should a planner in Vientiane read about a planning experience in Hanoi? Why is it important to read this instead of reading something about Paris? It is important to address these issues. Moreover, these practices also need to receive some legitimacy from the authorities so that they can be practiced by planners. Although it is highly relevant, action planning was not commonly practiced, partly because of the lack of legitimacy. These are significant challenges for organizations like APSA which needs to take part in the spatial transformation of Asian cities. Many changes are taking place in Asian cities and planning, but halfheartedly. Empowering communities is the most certain way to empower planning. This will give new life to communities and planning in rapidly transforming Asia. Centering the community in the planning discourse is crucial for the planning process to achieve this goal. However, the usual town meetings which operate within the dominant discourse is grossly inadequate. At times of transformation, it is important to maintain the relationship between the society and space. If not, it is more likely than not for them to get disconnected, leading to the defamiliarization of the environment for the inhabitants. Although the new aggressiveness among planners should be valued, as the suggestions made by the team headed by Wu in Beijing, reducing the speed and scale of urban renewal,72 and rethinking about the dominant discourses, both theory and practice, is a prerequisite to build communities instead of physical environments. Most crucially, researchers of Asian cities should not deny their subjects the same time and space that he or she occupies. Planners should work with people and not for people. At this stage, people in Asia are far ahead of planners as a whole. This is not unusual as, at one level, they do not have the same constraints that the planners have in regard to transformation of space. Nevertheless, there is much to be learned from the people about Asian urbanization. Engaging with the people, and learning from them requires the crossing of the boundary between us and them. The planner should become a trans-status subject. The CapAsia program that I direct with Wes Janz, a unique field study program based on collaborative-projects carried out by American and south Asian students, is experimenting with the possibility of working with people. This is a story for another day. The point is, this is a significant challenge for APSA. Conclusions In short, Asia is transforming in its own way. As I have demonstrated above, the social transformations of Asia are indeed paralleled by spatial transformations. The social and spatial transformations are not isomorphic or isotemporal, but take their own forms. The local people are not passive recipients of global and dominant forces, but create and negotiate spaces for their social and cultural practices. The transformation of the Asian city is far more complex than the hegemonic discourses of modernization and globalization suggest.
Using “modernizing” and “globalizing” to characterize this transformation can only provide a partial view of this change. This transformation cannot be understood simply as Westernization or Asianization used in a dualistic way, by using simple dualities, using Western frameworks of analysis, or external vantage points. It is important to remove the wrapper around the discourses on Asian urbanization of global discourses which focus on mega projects and the Westernization of Asian cities and identify globalization as simply one transformation among many. The understanding of the Asian city on their own terms requires new analytical tools. The documentation of diverse and innovative urban and planning practices in Asian cities could provide an alternative tool box of ideas that could be used along with other tool boxes to observe, understand, and create diverse environments and to inspire innovations of their own. In order to substantially engage the city, the scholars and practitioners should understand the local production of space and develop an empathy towards the local inhabitants; this requires the shifting of the vantage point of inquiry from the West to the locale, or the city itself: to observe the production of space from the spaces of production. In addition to the multitude of small transformations carried out by local inhabitants, planners have also infused innovative elements into their plans. Although almost every city plan in Asia has Western roots, some planners have been learning by doing. The development of planning methods such as action planning and support systems, the adoption of incremental and loose-fit planning, the acknowledgment of the vernacular land use patters, the politics of planning, and the negotiation of Colombo’s globality demonstrate the transformative capacity of the Asian planner. While planning is trying to catch up with the people, planning education is trying to catch up with the progressive planners. There is a significant role that APSA can play in this process. Notes: 1. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell,1991), 54. 2. Partha Chatterjee, "Towards a Postcolonial Modernity: AsiaSource Interview with Partha Chatterjee" Asia Source: A Resource of the Asia Society, http://www.asiasource.org/news/special_reports/chatterjee.cfm (Retrieved January 10, 2007) 3. http://www.capasia.net/iv/announcement.htm 4. See also Joochul Kim and Sang-Chuel Choe, Seoul: The Making of a Metropolis (Chichester, Wiley, 1997), 233-4, below. 5. Inspired by Anthony King, “Rethinking Colonialism: An Epilogue,” in Forms of Dominance: On the Architecture and Urbanism of the Colonial Enterprise, eds., Nezar Al-Sayyad: 339–356 (Aldershot: Avebury, 1992). 6. Liu Thai Ker, Personal communications, March, 2001. 7. Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes Its Object (Columbia University Press, 1983).
8. Seymour Mandelbaum, “Thinking about Cities as Systems: Re¬flections on the History of an Idea” Journal of Urban History 2 (1985): 139-150. 9. See Nihal Perera, “Exploring Colombo: The Relevance of a Knowledge of New York.” In Representing the City: Ethnicity, Capital, and Culture in the 21st Century Metropolis, ed. Anthony D. King: 137-157 (London: Macmillan, 1996). 10. Mayfair Mei-Hui Yang, “Spatial Struggles: Postcolonial Complex, State Disenchantment, and Popular Reappropriation of Space in Rural Southeast China” The Journal of Asian Studies 63, 3 (August 2004): 719-755; Koompong Noobanjong, Power, Identity, and the Rise of Modern Architecture: From Siam to Thailand (Dissertation.com, 2003). 11. I have demonstrated elsewhere of four principle stages of European colonialism Ceylon: the military conquest, the establishment of a colonial administration, economic incorporation, and the establishment of a European cultural hegemony. (See Nihal Perera, Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998)). 12. See Nihal Perera, “Importing Problems: The Impact of a Housing Ordinance on Colombo” Arab World Geographer, 8, 1-2 (Summer 2005): 61-76. 13. Sulakshana Mahajan, “Ramayan to Globalayan: Transformation of Nasik,” in City Space and Globalization: An International Perspective. Proceedings of an International Symposium, ed. Hemalata C. Dandekar: 282-95 (Ann Arbor, MI: College of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan, 1998), 292. 14. See Perera, Society and Space. 15. See Perera, “Exploring Colombo.” 16. Sang-Cheul Choe, “A Search for Cultural Paradigm of Urbanization in East Asia,” in City Space and Globalization: An International Perspective. Proceedings of an International Symposium, ed. Hemalata C. Dandekar: 72-75 (Ann Arbor, MI: College of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan, 1998), 75. My emphasis. 17. Vikramaditya Prakash, “Listening to the Subaltern: The Ethics of Professional Work Or, Notes Towards the Pedagogy of the India Studio,” in City Space and Globalization: An International Perspective. Proceedings of an International Symposium, ed. Hemalata C. Dandekar: 245-8 (Ann Arbor, MI: College of Architecture and Planning, University of Michigan, 1998), 246. 18. Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (1991), 201. 19. Arjun Appadurai, Modernity at Large: Cultural Dimensions of Globalization (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1998 [1996]), 32.
20. Goh Beng-Lan, Modern Dreams: An Inquiry into Power, Cultural Production, and the Cityscape in Contemporary Urban Penang, Malaysia (Ithaca, NY: Southeast Asia Program, Cornell University, 2002). 21. Jill Grant, “Mixed Use in Theory and Practice: Canadian Experience with Implementing a Planning Principle” in Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning I, eds. Bruce Stiftel and Vanessa Watson: 15-36 (Routledge, 2005). 22. Hutchinson 1998; Saunders 1997, in Grant, “Mixed Use.” 23. Anthony Giddens, The Nation-state and Violence, Volume Two: A Contemporary Critique of Historical Materialism. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1987, 11. 24. See Nihal Perera “Indigenising the Colonial City: Late 19th-Century Colombo and Its Landscape” Urban Studies: Contested Landscapes, Asian Cities, eds., Lily Kong and Lisa Law, 39, 9 (2002): 1703-21; “Feminizing the City: Gender and Space in Colonial Colombo” In TransStatus Subjects: Genders in the Globalization of South and Southeast Asia, eds., Sonita Sarker and Esha Niyogi De: 67-87 (Duke University Press, 2002). 25. See Nihal Perera, “Contesting Visions: Hybridity, Liminality, and Authorship of the Chandigarh Plan,” Planning Perspectives 19, 2 (April 2004): 179-203; “Chandigarh: India’s Modernist Experiment,” in Planning Twentieth-Century Capital Cities, ed., David Gordon: 22636 (London: Routledge). 26. Aditya Prakash, personal communication, January 18, 2003. 27. Julian Beinart, Chandigarh 1999: Diagrams and Realities, in J. Takhar (ed.), Celebrating Chandigarh: Proceedings of Celebrating Chandigarh: 50 Years of the Idea 9–11 January 1999 (Chandigarh: Chandigarh Perspectives, 2001), pp. 161. 28. Rahul Mehrotra, Paper presented to the conference on Emerging South Asian Urban Design Practices & Paradigms, Asia-Link, Colombo, June 7-9 29. Wing-Shing Tang and Him Chung, “Rural-Urban Transition in China: Beyond the Desakota Model,” in China’s Resions, Polity, and Economy: A Study of Spatial Transformaiton in the Post-Reform Era, eds., S-M Li and W-S Tang (Hong Kong: The Chinese University of Hong Kong Press, 2000); “Rural-Urban Transition in China: Illegal Landuse and Construction” Asia Pacific Viewpoint 43, 1 (April 2002): 43-62. 30. Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfiguraiton of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China’s Floating Population. 31. Yang, “Spatial Struggles” 32. Jawaharlal Nehru, The Discovery of India (Calcutta, Signet Press, 1946), 562–3. 33. Nehru, The Discovery of India, 566.
34. Inspired by Scott A. Bollens, “Urban Planning and Intergroup Conflict: Confronting a Fractured Public Interest” in Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning I, eds. Bruce Stiftel and Vanessa Watson: 209-246 (Routledge, 2005). 35. Inspired by Bollens, “Urban Planning and Intergroup Conflict.” 36. Leonie Sandercock, “Out of the Closet: The Importance of Stories and Storytelling in Planning Practice” in Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning I, eds. Bruce Stiftel and Vanessa Watson: 299-321. Routledge, 2005. 37. Michel Foucault, Power/ Knowledge (New York: Pantheon, 1980), 81-3. 38. For the limits of such dualistic positions, see Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak. “Can the Subaltern Speak?” in Colonial Discourse and Postcolonial Theory, Patrick Williams and Laura Chrisman, eds., (New York: Columbia University Press, 1994). 39. This is precisely why the search for planning cultures failed. See Bishwapriya Sanyal, “Hybrid Planning Cultures: The Search for the Global Cultural Commons” in Comparative Planning Cultures, ed. Bishwapriya Sanyal: 3-25 (Routledge, 2005). 40. For example, this is what some scholars do when they try to find answers to issues of culture in the writings of well-known figures in political economy. The results of this type of work are not very different from a qualitative standpoint. Jane Jacobs clearly highlighted the limits of Western science in understanding the city. See Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities (New York:Vintage Books, 1961). 41. Oren Yiftachel, “The Dark Side of Modernism: Planning as Control of an Ethnic Minority” Postmodern Cities and Space, Sophie Watson and K. Gibson, eds.(Oxford: Blackwell, 1994); Leonie Sandercock, Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998); Bruce Stiftel and Vanessa Watson, eds. Dialogues in Urban and Regional Planning I. Routledge, 2005. 42. Nihal Perera “Indigenising the Colonial City”; “Feminizing the City.” 43. Yeoh, Contesting Space. 44.Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Pantheon, 1978); Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin. The Empire Writes Back: Theory and Practice in Post-Colonial Literatures (London ; New York : Routledge, 1989); Partha Chatterjee, The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories (1993); Homi Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London and New York: Routledge, 1994); Spivak, “Can the Subaltern Speak?”; A Critique of Postcolonial Reason (1999); Dipesh Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2000); “Subaltern Studies and Postcolonial Historiography” Position Papers, Nepantla: Views from South 1, 1 (2002): 9-32; Gyan Prakash “Subaltern Studies as Postcolonial Criticism” The American Historical Review 99 (5) (December 1994): 1475-1490; Bill Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, The Post-Colonial Studies Reader (London ; New York : Routledge, 1995); Bill
Ashcroft, Gareth Griffiths, and Helen Tiffin, Postcolonial Studies: The Key Concepts (Routledge, 2000); Bill Ashcroft, Post-Colonial Transformations (Routledge, 2001); Partha Chatterjee, The Politics of the Governed: Reflections on Popular Politics in Most of the World (Columbia University Press, 2006). 45 (King, 1976, 1990; Ross and Telkamp, 1985; Saueressig-Schreuder, 1986; Metcalf, 1989; Rabinow, 1989; Mitchell, 1991; Wright, 1991; Al-Sayyad, 1992; Crinson, 1996; Home, 1997; Yeoh, 1996; Kusno, 2000) 46. James Holston, The Modernist City: An Anthropological Critique of Brasilia (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1989); Brenda Yeoh, Contesting Space: Power Relations and the Urban Built Environment in Colonial Singapore (Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1996); Nalbantoglu and Wong (1997); Nihal Perera, Society and Space: Colonialism, Nationalism, and the Postcolonial Identity in Sri Lanka (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1998); “Indigenising the Colonial City: Late 19th-Century Colombo and Its Landscape” Urban Studies: Contested Landscapes, Asian Cities, eds., Lily Kong and Lisa Law, 39, 9 (2002): 1703-21; Leonie Sandercock, eds., Making the Invisible Visible: A Multicultural Planning History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1998); Abidin Kusno, Behind the Postcolonial: Architecture, Urban Space and Political Culture in Indonesia (London: Routledge, 2000); Goh, Modern Dreams; Li Zhang, Strangers in the City: Reconfigurations of Space, Power, and Social Networks Within China's Floating Population (Stanford University Press, 2001); Joe Nasr and Mecedes Volait, Urbanism: Imported or Exported? (Academy Editions, 2003); Koompong Noobanjong, Power, Identity, and the Rise of Modern Architecture. For a review, see: Brenda Yeoh, “Postcolonial Cities” Progress in Human Geography 25, 3 (2001): 456-468; Anthony D. King, “Actually Existing Postcolonialisms: Colonial Urbanism and Architecture after the Postcolonial Turn,” in Postcolonial Urbanism: Southeast Asian Cities and Global Processes, ed., Ryan Bishop, John Phillips, and Wei Wei Yeo: 1167-186 (New York, London: Routledge, 2003); Yang, “Spatial Struggles.” 47 Urban Development Authority, Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan (Colombo, UDA, 2001) 48 Urban Development Authority, Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan ,62. 49 Liu Thai Ker, “Remaking Asian Cities: The Second Cycle,” in The Twentieth Century Urban Planning Experience: Proceedings of the 8 International Planning History Conference, ed. Robert Freestone: 465-469 (Sydney: University of New South Wales: International Planning History Society, 1998) 50 See, for example, Lester Thurow; Immanuel Wallerstein. 51 T.G. McGee, “The Emergence of Desakota Regions in Asia: Expanding a Hypothesis,” in The Extended Metropolis: Settlement Transition in Asia, eds. Norton Ginsburg, Bruce Koppel, and T.G. McGee:3-26 (Honolulu, HI: University of Hawai’i Press, 1991); Norton Ginsburg, “Extended Metropolitan Regions in Asia: A New Spatial Paradigm,” in The Urban Transition: Reflections on the American and Asian Experience (Hong Kong: The Chinese University Press, 1990).
52 Jean Gottman, Megalopolis: The Urbanized Nortwestern Seaboard of the United States (New York: The Twentieth Century Fund, Kraus International Publications, 1961), 257. 53 McGee, “The Emergence of Desakota,” 5. 54 Urban Development Authority, Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan, 10 55 Urban Development Authority, Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan, 6. 56 Wu Liangyong, Rehabilitating the Old City of Beijing: A Project in the Ju’er Hutong Neighborhood (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1999), ix. 57 Roger C.K. Chen, “ Shanghai - Development Strategie and Planning Implications,” in International Conference: Re-Inventing Global Cities. CUPEM 20th Anniversary International Conference: 168-183 (Hong Kong: The Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management, 2000), 181. Emphasis mine. 58 Martin Perry, Lily Kong, and Brenda Yeoh, Singapore: A Developmental City State (Chichester, Wiley, 1997), 284. 59 John Friedmann, “ Strategic Planning for World Cities: A critical Comparison of Singapore and Hong Kong,” in International Conference: Re-Inventing Global Cities. CUPEM 20th Anniversary International Conference: 152-167 (Hong Kong: The Centre of Urban Planning and Environmental Management, 2000), 166. The plans are Singapore: The Next Lap (1991), Singapore 21: Together We Make the Difference (2000), and Bringing the Vision to Life: Hong Kong’s Long Term Development Needs and Goals (2000). 60 Joochul Kim and Sang-Chuel Choe, Seoul: The Making of a Metropolis (Chichester, Wiley, 1997), 233-4. 61 “The main task of government ... is to provide an environment that promotes competition and efficiency and remove constraints that affect private sector participation.” (Urban Development Authority, 73-4). 62 Logan, John R., and Harvey L. Molotch. 1987. Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press. 63 Perry et al., Singapore, 226. 64 Ching-Tong Wu, “Whither Asian Planning Education?” in Planning for a Better Urban Living Environment in Asia eds. Anthony Gar-On Yeh and Mee Kam Ng: 364-84 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), 380. 65 Perera, Society and Space, Chapter 5. 66 Jamal Ansari, Personal communications, 2003. 67 Urban Development Authority, Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan
68 Urban Development Authority, Colombo Metropolitan Regional Plan,6. 69 Perera, Society and Space, Chapter 6. 70 The term “loose-fit� for this planning was suggested by Wes Janz. 71 Gita Verma, Slumming India: A Chronicle of Slums and Their Saviours (London 2003). 72 Wu, Rehabilitating, 211.